TimeControl Industrial Extended Rates

TimeControl Industrial brings field data collection to the next level by combining extensive rate functionality with both the Crew Timesheet and Material / Equipment / Production Entry interfaces. You can match any conditions in labor or non-labor data collection to match up to the exact rate premiums or escalated rate conditions.

TimeControl Industrial's Extended Rates functionality takes field data collection to the next level by allowing an unlimited number of fields from either the Crew Entry Timesheet interface or the Material / Equipment / Production Entry interface to be matched to an extensive rate table with multiple values.

TimeControl's timesheet crew extended rates

Imagine a situation for Crew Timesheet entry where payroll knows there are union-negotiated rates with premiums for several factors. We know the project and the task. That's easy. But there are also premiums for whether the work was done on the evening shift 2 or the graveyard shift 3 instead of the daytime shift. There is a premium if the work is done outdoors instead of in. There's a further premium if the weather is bad and another if the work must be done out of town. Plus the labor contract with the union has all these rates changing on the first of the year so they must escalate on that date.

Managing this with Extended Rates in TimeControl is very straightforward. We define columns in the Crew Timesheet for "Shift", "Outdoors", "Weather" "Remote" which will be filled in by the foremen or the Field Data Collection staff. In the Extended Rates table, we make a match for these very fields as well as a field for Resource or Employee so we can match up the exact rate required with the premium we need. Since one of those rates can be the date, we create right away the escalated rates which will automatically come into effect once we pass the first of the year. The process is simple, elegant and yet infinitely flexible.

We use the same structure for non-labor rates with a Material / Equipment / Production Rate table. In both these tables, not only do we make a match to ensure we find the exactly correct rate for that entry, but we allow up to 9 values for each rate. That means that you can track for the same line item, an internal cost, an external billing price, an original estimated cost, an average project management cost and more.

How hard is this during data entry? It's not. The entire matching process is managed in the background. Field Data Collection staff do not even need to know the rate values. They can just fill in the possible columns and even select from lists of possible drop down values for each column (For example, there might only be a 1, 2 or 3 for shift numbers). Ensuring that only correct values are entered in either the Crew Timesheet Entry or the Material / Equipment / Production entry is check during entry. When we check that only existing possible values were entered, it's certain that a match in the Extended Rates table will occur.

For organizations who don't need to track their pricing or costs in TimeControl but still need to collect the different values from the field in the Crew Timesheet or Material / Equipment / Production the regular simple Rate system in TimeControl Industrial can be selected and we can leave the calculations to external Finance, Estimating or Project Management systems.

This type of architecture makes TimeControl Industrial at once easy to use and deploy and yet phenomenally flexible to meet our clients' requirements.

Related Content

TimeControl's Rate functionality is a remarkably flexible and powerful set of configurable functions that enable one of the most adaptable rate environments in the industry. TimeControl and TimeControl Industrial allows unlimited rate codes, multiple rate values per code, rates that are specific to individuals, resources and groups and so much more. This tutorial gives new and existing TimeControl administrators a tutorial on how to create a rate environment for their particular business requirements with information on each of the Rate building blocks in the system.